Blizzard giving away Diablo 3 for free to WoW subscribers for a 1 year commitment.

[Xanthious]

We learned yesterday that Blizz is rolling out a new promotion called World of Warcraft Annual Pass. This is a promotion where WoW subscribers get digital copy of Diablo 3, guaranteed beta access to the new Mists of Pandaria expansion, and an in game mount called Tyrael?s Charger in exchange for committing to keeping their WoW subscription active for the next year. Besides being a hell of a sweet deal as a current WoW player I find this interesting when looking beneath the surface of this new promotion.

First off it tells me WoW is losing subscribers at a pretty hefty rate and Blizz is desperate as to keep people on board. So desperate, in fact, as to just give away copies of Diablo 3 to keep people on board for the next year. I believe the blame lies squarely with the current expansion, Cataclysm. In Cataclysm Blizz catered to the vocal minority that wanted a return to the difficulty of Vanilla and Burning Crusade and judging by the massive loss of subscriptions a very sizable chunk of the playerbase simply didn't want that. To those people, with myself included, the game ceased being fun as endgame was nothing but a laser focus on raiding. Suffice to say I think we can label the Cataclysm experiment as failed seeing as Blizz is giving away it's next big release just to keep people playing WoW for the next year when hopefully the new expansion will be gearing up for release.

The other thing that I find interesting about this is that it tells me that Blizz is relying on the real money auction house of Diablo 3 pretty heavily. If they are willing to give away millions of copies of Diablo 3 for free they really don't seem concerned with box sales. You have to think the overlap between WoW players and Diablo 3 players is going to be pretty massive so you can't help but wonder just how many potential sales are they costing themselves with this promotion. The number is likely in the millions. I wouldn't be surprised to find out down the road that half of the Diablo 3 playerbase got their copy free via the Annual Pass.

To wrap this up I think that this promotion is freaking awesome idea and great deal for current WoW players. However, I also think that based off this promotion you can draw the conclusion that Blizz is pretty desperate to keep WoW subscriptions at this point and that Blizz believes that the real money auction house in Diablo 3 is going to a pile of money large enough to make up for giving away the game to a huge portion of the playerbase.

 

[Orks da best]

that be, rather accrute as far as I see, cata=pandeing to hardcore=small amount of player base=not good business=loss of subs. I played it for a few months, its fun early on, but its an old game and grind is everywhere, plus theres few raids and the dungons are stuff with so much trash that a single one can take 2-3 times longer then the hardest wrath one.

 

[nukethetuna]

It's an interesting deal for anyone that plays WoW and is even remotely interested in Diablo 3.

I've played WoW on and off for years. I'm not playing right now and have no plans to go back, but if it was just a break I might go for this.

That said, playing for a year straight is something I don't think I've ever done.

 

[synobal]

Ya how would you have time to play Wow if you've got diablo 3? Seems to be this is blizzards way to keep the subscription numbers from dropping. People will get the years sub, but play less because of diablo. In the end it's a win for blizzard.

Blizzard made the Wow Killer and it's name is diablo 3.

 

[galdon2004]

15 dollars a month, for 12 months comes out to $180. If we assume Diablo 3 will be 60 bucks like most games are nowadays, you could buy 3 Diablo 3 games for that.

 

[Vrach]

how much is a years subscription in (£), if its around 40 -50 pounds id consider this.

My guess a year's subscription will be 150$, Diablo 3 will cost 60$, so you basically get a year of playing for 90$ (compared to a 6 month plan for 74$ or so)

OT: Yeah, it's dying and dying fast. With the competition fast approaching, it's gonna take some heavy blows in the next year. Not saying it's gonna die out completely soon, if ever, but it's being dethroned from holding the monopoly on MMOs.

 

[Senaro]

Diablo 3 will probably be 50$ as most new computer games are. I can't see paying 180$ for an extra year of Cataclysm. Unless you absolutely know you want to be playing Warcraft for the next year straight, I think this is a terrible deal.

 

[Puddleknock]

Interesting idea, though does have a faint smell of desperation to it. I don't think I've ever had my wow account active for over a year, not really planning to now.

Add this to the new expansion, whenever that is released, and its clear to see Blizz are prepared to fight to keep wow at the top of the MMO pecking order. I wonder what other schemes Blizz will develop to make people keep playing wow.

 

[4ged]

heh with the implementing of zg-za heroics cata became ezmode just like wotlk did after the whole lets get rid of tier progression thing, if you played during vanilla or tbc, you would know that cata is no where near an attempt to being hard and raid oriented, there just trying to make even more money from a long dead game, after t8 content became useless wow had officially died and began to rot and stagnate, i personally enjoyed nax during wrath but they killed there own game by making people skip it and everything else and go from heroics to 10 man end game content raids, that's not a focus on hardcore raiding but a way to get the casuals into endgame content, and that alone has destroyed the wonder of wow, its now just a race to endgame and that's not fun, the sad part is that blizzard recognized this and said they would go back to how it was then repackaged wotlk and sold it on a lie, blizzard likes money and to sell a year pass on the whole play diablo 3 and use the real money ah so we can take a huge cut on your sales and not do anything in return just confirms that.

 

[Phlakes]

No offense, but WoW has to die sometime. It was great while it lasted but Blizzard should put some effort into making something else that can have the same effect.

 

[Eccentric_Jon]

If I have the money spare I'll give this a go I think. Really want Diablo 3, and my fiancee got me into WoW recently, so there's plenty for me to spend a year on, especially with a new expansion on top of the vanilla version & 3 expansions already out.

 

[dbphreakdb]

The reason for WoW's decline is not the return to Vanilla or BC hard mode. I was in Vanilla, and it wasn't as ridiculous as Cataclysm for one. Alot of the reason people are leaving, I feel, has to do with the idiocy of the majority of people that play.

Before WoW exploded in popularity, you had people that played who actually could and would listen, and it was fun because of that. It was fun because your success to failure ratio was so much higher. You didn't have to balance 20 different stats just to be able to hit someone (pvp) or something (pve).

Now? Now you have people who act retarded on purpose, trying to get the highest numbers. There has been little done to innovate difficulty in the complexity of a dungeon. Harder generally just means they have more health, hit harder, and there are more of them. It's just boring. I remember what Vanilla was like, and Cataclysm is not Vanilla. Cataclysm is trash, that is not pandering to the 'vocal Days of Old minority', but if it is pandering, it is to the 'zomg 1337 hardmode' minority, who have nothing better than to try and gain a sense of self worth off of a collection of pixels and data packets.

And that's just fine. So long as Blizzard continues in this vein with WoW, they won't have my money. Maybe this will thin the ranks enough to make the game worth it. Afterall, blizzard is the only game with subscribers in the millions now, versus the hundred thousands it had in Vanilla, which is more in line with the rest of the MMO industry, which attests to it's status as a freak of nature.

OT: Maybe they can get enough to do this to keep the subscription model chugging along for another year, but maybe if they want to keep it going, they need to come into this decade, and look at non sub with mt's

 

[Rawne1980]

My wife has just done that.

All it does is tell you that you can't cancel your sub for 12 months. It's still a monthly payment, nothing changes.

She wasn't going to cancel her sub anyway and she gets a free copy of Diablo 3 .... which she won't be playing anyway ....

I wasn't going to buy Diablo 3 but if she has a copy she won't be using I guess i'll just have to face the hardship of playing that .... in the words of little orphan Annie, it's a hard knock life for me.



Plus she gets a new mount in WoW and she likes getting new pets/mounts/shiny things.

 

[Xanthious]

My wife has just done that.

All it does is tell you that you can't cancel your sub for 12 months. It's still a monthly payment, nothing changes.

She wasn't going to cancel her sub anyway and she gets a free copy of Diablo 3 .... which she won't be playing anyway ....

I wasn't going to buy Diablo 3 but if she has a copy she won't be using I guess i'll just have to face the hardship of playing that .... in the words of little orphan Annie, it's a hard knock life for me.



Plus she gets a new mount in WoW and she likes getting new pets/mounts/shiny things.

. . . and she gets the guaranteed beta access to the new expansion which I think may be close to the free copy of Diablo 3 in terms of selling points for this promotion.

 

[Deathninja19]

how much is a years subscription in (£), if its around 40 -50 pounds id consider this.

3 months is about £18 I think so it's around 60 or 70 I think, it has been so long since I played WoW.

But op yeah you're right in a few years either WoW will be dead or it'll be free to play, but I think this is a good thing WoW in my eyes is over it's time for them to make something new either an MMO or whatever.

 

[UrieHusky]

No offense, but WoW has to die sometime. It was great while it lasted but Blizzard should put some effort into making something else that can have the same effect.

Uh...... Go do some research into blizzards 'project titan'.
Come back and look at your post.
Feel foolish.
Be forgiven cause it's not general knowledge.

OT; I only play WoW for little bits at a time, and it has its moments, it's just not the game I'd dedicate massive portions of my time to.

I'll likely come back for pandaria and stay for a few more months but then I'll likely quit again.

It's been like this for a lot of people since Wrath came out so yeah I also can't shake the feeling that this is just desperation for a last milking before the cow dies.

But I've been wrong before.

 

[Jegsimmons]

lets see about 15 dollars a month for a year on wow, or a 60 dollar game.......
unless you already play wow and plan on the year subsciption thing anyway, i dont see how this would help.

 

[Sean951]

Yes, it must be the death of WoW. Not Blizzard guaranteeing themselves customers for a year or showing loyal customer how much they appreciate their long time loyalty, but just the death of WoW.

I also doubt they are expecting to make much money off the Diablo auction house. I think they only get $.05 per listing and 5% of the selling price?